Spring 2019 Undergraduate Courses

Content List: Spring 2019 First Year Seminars

ENGL 1001-001, 002: Freshman Writing Seminar (Spring 2019)

Provides training and practice in writing and critical thinking. Focuses on the writing process, the fundamentals of composition, and the structure of argument. Provides numerous and varied assignments with opportunity for revision. Requisites: Restricted to students with 0-56 credits (Freshmen or Sophomore) College of Arts and Sciences majors only.

Content List: Spring 2019 General Literature & Language

ENGL 1220-001, 002: From Gothic to Horror (Spring 2019)

Explores literature in the Gothic mode and aesthetic and critical theories related to modern "horror" genres or their precursors. Introduces literary-critical concepts (such as notions of abjection, repression and anxiety) that developed alongside this branch of literature. Students read canonical works in British and American traditions while reflecting on notions of popular or marginalized literature.

ENGL 1220-003: From Gothic to Horror (Spring 2019)

Horror is “hot” right now. Prestige television programming such as The Walking Dead and True Detective, the popularity of writers such as Jeff VanderMeer and Thomas Ligotti, and academic interest in weird and new weird fiction attest to this fact. This course examines this current popularity by way of an historical investigation of the roots of the horror genre in the Gothic, its development in the ghost stories and weird fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its current appropri...

ENGL 1230-001: Environmental Literature (Spring 2019)

Introduces students to the tradition of American environmental literature dating from Transcendentalism through realist and experimental contemporary literary texts. Students will study key terms and concepts related to the environment such as anthropocentrism, bioregionalism, eco-cosmopolitanism, environmental justice, deep ecology, and posthumanism. They will apply them to different literary genres toward developing critical analyses and environmental readings. Approved for arts and sciences core curricul...

ENGL 1240-001, 002: Planetarity (Spring 2019)

What does it mean to live on the earth? How does this change when humanity gains the power to change the planet and explore outer space? This seminar focuses on a range of post-WWII works of fiction and non-fiction, art, film, and media that confront these questions. We will read texts ranging from mainstream comics to experimental postwar novels. Students will also consider works of land art, Hollywood films, and video games. We will explore how postwar efforts to transform the terrestrial environment and ...

ENGL 1250-001: Intro to Global Women’s Literature (Spring 2019)

Introduces global literature by women. Covers both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods. Acquaints students with the contribution of women writers to the literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution. Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: WGST 1250 

ENGL 1250-880: Intro to Global Women’s Literature (Spring 2019)

This course considers global women’s literature from the late nineteenth century to the present. The body of work we discuss will be global not just by virtue of the amalgamation of works we read, by authors from a variety of nations and continents, but also because they tell global stories, tales of migration and travel, of origins, adaptations, and returns. We will ask how women in particular represent global economic and cultural exchange, as well as how they represent experiences of place and nation, bo...

ENGL 1270-001, 002, 003: Intro to American Women’s Literature (Spring 2019)

Introduces literature by women in America. Covers both poetry and fiction and varying historical periods. Acquaints students with the contribution of women writers to the literary tradition and investigates the nature of this contribution. Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: WGST 1270 

ENGL 1420-001: Poetry (Spring 2019)

This course introduces you to the great variety of poetry written in English and to some of poetry's most creative and powerful voices. We will begin by training ourselves in how to recognize a poem – its meter, rhyme, structure, and intense focus on words – and in how to appreciate or enjoy a poem -- what makes it good or bad. We will then focus on the work of three influential and innovative poets: William Blake's illuminated (illustrated) book, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Lucille Clifton's memoir,...

ENGL 1420-002: Poetry (Spring 2019)

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide                 or press an ear against its hive.                 I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.                   I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.                  But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.             ...

ENGL 1420-003, 004: Poetry (Spring 2019)

Introduces students to how to read a poem by examining the great variety of poems written and composed in English from the very beginning of the English language until recently.

ENGL 1500-001: Masterpieces of British Literature (Spring 2019)

Introduces students to a range of major works of British literature, including at least one play by Shakespeare, a pre-20th century English novel, and works by Chaucer and/or Milton.

ENGL 1600-001, 002: Masterpieces of American Literature (Spring 2019)

Enhances student understanding of the American literary and artistic heritage through an intensive study of a few centrally significant texts, emphasizing works written before the 20th century.

ENGL 1800-001, 002: American Ethnic Literatures (Spring 2019)

Introduces significant fiction by ethnic Americans. Explores both the literary and the cultural elements that distinguish work by these writers. Emphasizes materials from Native American, African American, and Chicano traditions.

ENGL 3000-001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010: Shakespeare for Nonmajors (Spring 2019)

Introduction to Shakespeare. Introduces students to 6-10 of Shakespeare's major plays. Comedies, histories, and tragedies will be studied. Some non-dramatic poetry may be included. Viewing of Shakespeare in performance is often required.

ENGL 3000-100: Shakespeare for Nonmajors (Spring 2019)

Tales of love, lust, jealousy, and betrayal; mirth and mischief; greed and murder; revenge, mercy, and redemption: welcome to the world of Shakespeare! We’ll encounter villainous kings, evil usurpers, and even a few charismatic heroes, as well as ill-fated lovers, deceitful rogues, social outcasts, wise fools, witty servants, and unruly women. Discover why Shakespeare’s characters continue to enthrall readers and viewers over 400 years after their first stage performances! Readings will include: A Midsummer...

ENGL 3060-007, 008: Modern and Contemporary Literature for Nonmajors, Contemporary Fantasy (Spring 2019)

Since the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the United States in the mid-1960s, fantasy has become immensely popular. However, the fantasy that has become and remains popular tends to be that written in a mode very similar to Tolkien’s, involving quests, Dark Lords, battles between clearly distinguished good guys and bad guys. However, there are other traditions in fantasy beyond this one. In the last decade especially, fantasy writers have experimented with the sorts of stories the fantasy genre can ...

ENGL 3060: Modern and Contemporary Literature for Nonmajors (Spring 2019)

Close study of significant 20th-century poetry, drama, and prose works. Readings range from 1920s to the present. Note: there are several sections of this course.

ENGL 3930-901: Internship (Spring 2019)

Provides academically supervised opportunity for upper-division students to work in public or private organizations on projects related to students' career goals and to relate classroom theory to practice. Department enforced prerequisite: 3.0 GPA and faculty supervision. Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours. 

Content List: Spring 2019 Undergraduate Creative Writing

ENGL 1191: Introduction to Creative Writing (Spring 2019)

This course introduces students to techniques of writing fiction and poetry. Student work is scrutinized by the instructor and may be discussed in a workshop atmosphere with other students. There are many sections of this course being offered. Please refer to the department schedule to find a section that works for you. This course may not be taken concurrently with ENGL 2021 or 2051, may not be repeated, and is not open to graduate students.

ENGL 2021: Introductory Poetry Workshop (Spring 2019)

The primary activity in this class will be the reading and discussion of student work, in a workshop format. The workshop will be “craft-driven,” which means we will try to regard each other’s work with writerly eyes, looking at the “how” as rigorously as the “what.”

ENGL 2051: Introductory Fiction Workshop (Spring 2019)

The primary activity in this class will be the reading and discussion of student work, in a workshop format. The workshop will be “craft-driven,” which means we will try to regard each other’s work with writerly eyes, looking at the “how” as rigorously as the “what.” There are many ways to tell a story and it is my hope we will explore some of the more interesting ones this next semester.

ENGL 3021-001: Intermediate Poetry Workshop (Spring 2019)

In this workshop, in addition to examining classmates' work, we will focus on expanding knowledge of technical aspects of the craft of poetry, innovations and blurring of genres, and writing poetry as a practice in the world. Discussion and revision will figure prominently, as will deep engagement with contemporary poetry through in-class discussion and generative exercises based on the work we read. Representative authors: Carl Phillips, Sun Yung Shin, Wanda Coleman, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, Tommy Pico, Alicia ...

ENGL 3041-001: Studies in Fiction and Poetry (Spring 2019)

In this class, we will consider themes of social justice and identity alongside craft and structure when it comes to reading and writing prose and poetry. The books are chosen for their complex observations and revisions of past and present, their hopes and visions for the future under difficult or impossible circumstances. We will look at real and imagined dystopias, experimental and classically structured works, the spare and the ornate. Many of our discussions will center on contrast, truth, possibility,...

ENGL 3051-001, 002: Intermediate Fiction Workshop (Spring 2019)

This is an intermediate course in fiction writing. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours. Required prerequisite courses are ENGL 1191 and ENGL 2051 (both with B grade minimum). Restricted to students who have declared the Creative Writing Track or Creative Writing Minor. Students may not take two fiction workshops in the department during the same semester. Students may be dropped from course for non-attendance.

ENGL 4021-001: Advanced Poetry Workshop (Spring 2019)

This is an advanced course in poetry writing. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours. Required prerequisite courses are ENGL 1191, ENGL 2021 and ENGL 3021 (all with B grade minimum). Restricted to students who have declared the Creative Writing Track or Creative Writing Minor. Students may not take two poetry workshops in the department during the same semester. Students may be dropped from course for non-attendance.

ENGL 4051-001, 002: Advanced Fiction Workshop (Spring 2019)

This is an advanced course in fiction writing. May be repeated up to 9 total credit hours. Required prerequisite courses are ENGL 1191, ENGL 2021 and ENGL 3021 (all with B grade minimum). Restricted to students who have declared the Creative Writing Track or Creative Writing Minor. Students may not take two poetry workshops in the department during the same semester. Students may be dropped from course for non-attendance.

Content List: Spring 2019 Introductory English Requirements

ENGL 2102-001: Literary Analysis (Spring 2019)

This course teaches how to analyze poetry and prose. It assumes some experience with literary analysis but not advanced knowledge. It is divided about equally between poetry and prose. The poetry half explores, among other things, the relation between poetry and music, including rap and popular song. The prose half includes both fiction and nonfiction. Both halves include exercises in creative writing. The goal is to acquire both analytical skill and new ways of understanding creativity, including your own....

ENGL 2102-002: Literary Analysis (Spring 2019)

This section of literary analysis will inquire into “who tells the story”—what happens when who narrates what—to work through the central goals of the course: to refine close reading and critical analysis skills via formal, cultural, historical, and comparative analyses as well as scholarly research. And to read some great authors: Henry James, Mary Shelley, Toni Morrison, and more.

ENGL 2102-003, 004: Literary Analysis (Spring 2019)

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through close attention to poetry and prose.

ENGL 2112-100: Introduction to Literary Theory (Spring 2019)

Introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. Covers major movements in modern literary/critical theory, from Matthew Arnold through new criticism to contemporary postmodern frameworks. Required for all English majors.

Content List: Spring 2019 British Literature to 1600

ENGL 3563-001: Shakespeare (Spring 2019)

Shakespeare's poetry and drama.

ENGL 4013-001: Intermediate Old English I (Spring 2019)

This course is the payoff for having learned the grammar of Old English in Introduction to Old English (which is the prerequisite for the course unless you see me for permission)! You will continue to develop your skills in Old English reading and translation as you read shorter canonical texts in verse and prose, such as riddles, charms, and shorter poems such as The Dream of the Rood and The Seafarer. Students will produce idiomatic translations for every class, write short assignments considering the lit...

Content List: Spring 2019 British Literature 1600 – 1900

ENGL 2504-001: British Literary History After 1660 (Spring 2019)

In this class, we will read a variety of works written between the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 20th centuries. Authors we will read include Swift, Wordsworth, Keats, Austen, E. Bronte, Tennyson, Browning (Elizabeth and Robert), Yeats, Eliot, Woolf, and others. Emphasis on the historical context for these writers and works, and on close analysis. Two papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

ENGL 3164-001: History and Literature of Georgian Britain (Spring 2019)

Georgian England runs roughly from 1714-1837, a period that encompasses a period of extraordinary change: Great Britain, arguably the most powerful nation in the world by 1800, gains and loses and then gains another empire, cities (especially London) grow explosively, modern industry begins, the novel as a literary genre is born, women and the working classes begin to assert their rights, and much else. Literature and the arts—in poetry, in fiction, in painting, in music, in drama, in architecture—are at a ...

ENGL 3204-001: Developments in the Novel (Spring 2019)

Surveys key developments in the formal and socio-cultural history of the British novel, from its rise in the long eighteenth century to its preeminence during the Victorian era. Readings may include works by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde and Joseph Conrad.

ENGL 4624-001: Special Topics: Transnational/Historical/Interdisciplinary Approaches, 1600-1900, Global Encounters (Spring 2019)

Literary texts, works of art, and consumer goods have played a major role in the spread of globalization. In this course we shall focus on a key moment in its long history: the 200-year period that began with the consumer and financial revolutions of the eighteenth century and culminated in the spread of industrialization and imperialism during the Victorian era. We shall grapple with such questions as: what roles have literature, the visual arts, and material culture played in the creation of a global imag...

Content List: Spring 2019 American Literature

ENGL 2115-001: American Frontiers (Spring 2019)

The frontier’s myths and promises have both inspired and impeded U.S. American enterprises. On one hand, the frontier stands for freedom, fresh starts, and rugged individualism. At the same time, the frontier is a site and source of genocide, dispossession, and lynch mob mentality. This class will explore the ways that this beguiling and brutal contradiction has indelibly shaped U.S. literature and popular culture. We will consider the U.S. mainland’s ever-receding frontiers through novels by James Fenimore...

ENGL 2655-001: Introduction to American Literature I, Early Ethnic American Writing (Spring 2019)

This course will explore traditions and intersections of American Indian, African American, Latinx, and other ethnic American literary writing from “discovery” (contact) to settlement (the colonies) to nationhood (revolution) to near dissolution and tentative resolution (the Civil War). In this course, writings that are often treated as entries that “augment” the “canon” will instead be understood as central to defining American literary history. Readings may include novels, poetry, speeches, oral narrative...

ENGL 4685-001: Special Topics in American Literature, Spacetime in the US Millennial Novel (Spring 2019)

Positioning itself at the crossroads of contemporary literature, geography, and new materialist philosophies, this course will explore how American millennial fictions map and navigate, construct and alter, inhabit and evacuate spacetime; and in tandem it will consider how theoretical texts on space and time (re)conceptualize these categories. In the wake of the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene (in which the divisions between nature and culture, human and extra-human scales have been destabili...

Content List: Spring 2019 Genre, Media, and Advanced Writing

ENGL 2036-001, 002: Introduction to Digital Media in the Humanities (Spring 2019)

Serves as an introduction to media studies specifically from a humanities perspective. Studies both histories and theories of media from the 20th and 21st centuries. Touches on methodologies for undertaking media studies (including distant ready and media archaeology). Objects of study may include such topics as film, radio, social media platforms and games, as well as digital art and literature.

ENGL 3116-002: Topics in Advanced Theory, Computational Literary Analysis (Spring 2019)

We all know that computers don’t have feelings.  But how might we leverage technology to think about what it is to be human; to identify the emotional state of a speaker; to anticipate the affective response a text aims to produce in a reader or audience member?  What kinds of questions can you ask about 100 novels that you can’t ask when reading a single book?  What kinds of insights about human creativity arise from taking advantage of computer programs capable of working with very large data sets?  These...

ENGL 3246-001: Topics in Popular Culture (Spring 2019)

Studies special topics in popular culture; specially designed for English majors. Topics vary each semester. May be repeated for a total of 6 credit hours for different topics.

ENGL 4026-001: Special Topics in Genre, Media and Advanced Writing, Writing for the Real World (Spring 2019)

What do employers want? If you Google that question, you will find that they want, almost above all else, and in every field, people who can communicate effectively in both speaking and writing. This course teaches how to do it in the real world––the world after graduation. It does so by developing other real-world skills such as teamwork, organizational ability, and critical thinking. Students practice all kinds of writing––description, narrative, analysis, argument––with an eye toward making it concise, l...

ENGL 4116-001: Advanced Topics in Media Studies (Spring 2019)

Studies specialized topics in the history, theory, and practice of media, such as the history of the book, the theory of digital media, and the theory and practice of multimedia forms. Specially designed for English majors. Topics vary year to year.

Content List: Spring 2019 Studies of Ethnicity, Race, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality

ENGL 2767-001: Survey of Post-colonial Literature (Spring 2019)

This course introduces students to the work of authors from formerly colonized nations in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on prose fiction, we will examine how postcolonial writers engage with issues of national identity and decolonization; negotiate the competing imperatives of English and vernacular literary traditions; and formulate both personal and collective strategies of self-representation. Possible texts include Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, Jo...

ENGL 3377-880: Multicultural Literature, Inve[n/r]ting “Multicultural” (Spring 2019)

In a provocative 2004 speech entitled “I Have a Plan to Destroy America,” Richard D. Lamm, the former three-term Governor of Colorado, equated “multi-culturalism” with “the doctrine of ‘Victimology.’ ” A decade later, CU Boulder renamed the “Center for Multicultural Affairs” as the “Cultural Unity & Engagement Center.” Yet “multicultural literature” is still taught at CU Boulder; in fact, it is the catalog label for this course. Is “multiculturalism” tainted? Defunct? In this course, we will survey mate...

ENGL 4677-001: Jewish-American Literature (Spring 2019)

In this class we explore a variety of Jewish-American literary works from the late nineteenth century to the present through writers such as Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Cynthia Ozick, among others. We examine a number of questions raised by this literature, including what a Jewish-American writer is or is not, what role does the immigrant experience play in Jewish writing, how is assimilation represented, how d...

ENGL 4717-001: Native American & Indigenous Studies Seminar (Spring 2019)

Engages a wide range of NAIS methodologies with a series of case studies. Focuses on print, visual, and digital texts encompassing wide swathe of Eurowestern disciplines, while seeking to recuperate and restore Indigenous epistemic practices within our scholarship. Refines students' skills in intellectual debate in the spirit of shared inquiry and challenges research and writing skills.

Content List: Spring 2019 Literatures in English, 1900 to the Present

ENGL 3078-001: Literature in English 1945-Present (Spring 2019)

Explores major literary and theoretical trends in the Anglo-American tradition after 1945.

ENGL 4018-001: Global, Transnational & Postcolonial Approaches to Post-1900 Literature, Post/Colonial Fictions of Development (Spring 2019)

How did the world become divided into “developed” and “developing” nation-states? Why are the costs and benefits of development so unevenly distributed across the world (and also internally, within a nation)? What are the indices by which we define development? Is development always a desirable goal? And how do projects of development intertwine with other key issues like human rights, gender equality, and ecological sustainability?  This course aims to explore some of these questions via the fiction of col...

Content List: Spring 2019 Critical Studies in English

ENGL 4039-001: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Literature of Defiance (Spring 2019)

All too often, English majors are told that their studies are impractical. W.H. Auden’s famous line, “Poetry makes nothing happen,” is often misunderstood as admitting the powerlessness of literature in general. In fact, though, literature has a track record of empowering social change. This course will examine the relative effectiveness of strategies of the “literature of defiance” across history. Poetry and fiction can dismantle taboos. Literature can also challenge and reframe what we value as a society:...

ENGL 4039-002: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Text/Image (Spring 2019)

A far-flung inquiry into the complicated relationship that has existed between text and image in Europe, Asia, and the Americas since the Middle Ages (with backward glances at Plato and the Bible). We shall study writings on the relationship between language and the visual arts, print culture, and the history of the book alongside a wide range of primary works, from medieval illuminated manuscripts and Islamic calligraphy to contemporary prints, paintings, artists’ books, and comics. We shall draw as much a...

ENGL 4039-003: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Relatability (Spring 2019)

What do we mean when we say a story is relatable? This course will examine the different ways in which we can explain the relationships between readers and books (or movies): why we like or dislike characters, how reading might shape our attitudes and behaviors, and whether some kinds of books might be bad for us or even dangerous to read. We will move between theories that explain this relationship and books that have famously or controversially encouraged or discouraged readerly response. Theorists may in...

ENGL 4039-004: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Prison Literature and Critical Prison Studies (Spring 2019)

Incarceration and criminalization have concerned many of the writers, philosophers, and activists who are central to literary, ethnic, and women and gender studies - for example, Harriet Jacobs, Henry David Thoreau, John Okada, Zitkala-Sa, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Richard Wright. We will read these and other authors in order to investigate how and why literary genres and theories have responded to the development and expansion of the prison system over the 19th through the 21st centuries. We wi...

ENGL 4039-005: Critical Thinking in English Studies, Teaching English (Spring 2019)

Montessori education suggests three stages of learning. First you understand the concepts, then you practice its applications, then you teach it to someone else as the "final." These are the guiding principles of this course, that you've been studying and practicing English for several years and your "capstone" or synthesis is to figure out and experience how to teach it to others. The main impetus for this course is the gap between our theories (almost all of them) and our practice, a gap that Jim Sosnoski...